Artykuły

A man was sent to prison. In the evening, when the guards turned off the lights, one of the prisoners from another cell shouted "TWENTY-SEVEN" and all other prisoners began to laugh. After a while some other man shouted "EIGHTY-ONE" and everybody burst out with laughter again.

The man was confused and he asked his cell mate why everybody laughed when somebody shouted a number.

The cell mate said: You see, in the library there is a book that has hundreds of jokes in it. We have been here so long that we learnt them all by heart, so when somebody shouts the number of the page, we know what joke it is and we laugh at it.

Next morning the man went to the library and read a few pages of the book. He chose some really good jokes and wrote the numbers of pages on a piece of paper, as he wanted to tell them to other prisoners.

In the evening, when it was dark, he shouted "FIFTEEN". There was only silence. He tried with another joke. "FORTY-THREE". Again silence. He was rather disappointed and he asked his cell mate -"Why is nobody laughing?" And the guy replied "It's the way you tell them..."

Just as everybody has heard of the Statue of Liberty or Great Canyon, everybody is familiar with the name of the Alcatraz Island, also known as the Rock. Between 1934 and 1963 that small island situated in the middle of San Francisco Bay was the place of imprisonment for the most dangerous, corrupted and vicious criminals of that times. The fact that the infamous Al Capone was kept there gives an idea about how well-secured this place was. In spite of precautions and the natural barrier formed by the waters of the Pacific Ocean various groups of prisoners made 14 attempts to escape. Some of them were shot during the escape, others drowned - only two people actually managed to get to the mainland (they were arrested one more time and sent back to the island some years later). One of the attempts, however, was so carefully planned and so cunning that to this day it has remained a most inspiring story.

The mastermind of the operation was Frank Lee Morris. Although he was a highly intelligent person, he had lived a life of crime since early teens. What is more, he had been doing time in many prisons before and he had managed to escape from a few of them. His partners were brothers John and Clarence Anglin, bank robbers, and Allan West - another hardened jailbird. The preparations took seven months and were unbelievably careful. The prisoners knew that behind the walls of their cells was a utility corridor that no one paid any attention to. Using such tools as spoons or a primitive drill made of the engine stolen from a vacuum cleaner, they made holes in the walls around air vents that led to the corridor. In order to hide the effects of their work they erected false walls. One of the Anglin brothers' tasks was to produce dummies that the prisoners would leave in beds to deceive the guards. They made them from toilet paper, soap and cement; hair stolen from the barbershop was glued to dummies' heads. What is more, as the prisoners realised that it would not be easy to swim to the mainland (showers in the Alcatraz prison were always quite hot so that prisoners would not get accustomed to cold water), they stole as many as 50 rubber raincoats and used them to manufacture a raft that could be promptly inflated by means of a device they made from an accordion. The escape went well - up to a point. Allan West was not able to remove the grille on the air vent and so he was left behind. The three men went through the corridor, climbed to the roof of the prison, and climbed down on the other side. And then they disappeared. Whether their escape was a success or a failure is still a matter of a debate. A decomposed body of a man in the prison uniform was found floating in water some time later and so were some of their private possessions. If the three men died during the escape, however, they died as free men.